Scott Rolen’s likely retirement got me to thinking, I covered one Hall of Famer (Barry Larkin), one guy who’s a lock to get in once he’s eligible (Ken Griffey Jr.) and another who will eventually get in (Rolen).

All three have one something in common other than a Hall-of-Fame resume. At the end of their careers, they were so beat up by injuries that they could only perform to their own standards on occasion.

Baseball does that to even the great ones. Football is obviously tougher on the body. But football is like being in a head-on collision. Baseball is like being in a couple hundred fender benders.

Rolen played in 2,038 games and 17,479 innings. How many slides and dives is that? The grind of “Big 162,” as Rolen called it, is something that is hard to comprehend until you do it.